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I've been studying and somewhat practicing SEO for about 4 years--and I've never seen great descriptions of what works in Yahoo versus the other engines. In fact I haven't aggressively or consciously optimized for Yahoo EVER. Yet I was amazed to see that with the most recent update at the end of October '07, Y! had my main business site powerfully ranked with a ...

As I work on my business site and other local businesses and read through the SEO world about what works, what is hot and newest trends, I find lots of literature about what to do.... but little about what really works. I'm going to try and summarize a bit about what works for local SEO and where the clients might be located that can afford more significant SEO efforts.

I had further comments with Miriam about this and it leads me to suggest advertising in adwords as a way to overcome the issues with the Crap Pack.

After discussing for a while, Miriam put it in a perspective that leads me to make the suggestion. If it was MY restaurant I'd do it.

I know. I suggested above that the poor interface and lack of information is EXACTLY google's plan to promote advertising. I know. The Crap Pack and multiple interfaces described by Miriam, are exactly the conniving subtle things to starve websites from organic traffic.

I know its playing into google's nefarious plan, (as I see it) to generate advertising revenues from an industry that generally doesn't advertise.

But if its my restaurant. I'd do it. Here is why.

1. With no others advertising I'd dominate the top of the page.

2. With no others advertising, bids would be low. REALLY LOW!! The cost should be VERY VERY LOW. Adwords costs go up with competitive bids. If nobody is advertising I can bid inexpensively and still show prominently.

3. I can use sitelinks to show my address and my phone number. The link to the ad goes directly to my site. I choose the page. Possibly I use a page with a map on it. In that case EACH CRITICAL feature that google is purposefully eliminating from other restaurants is seen in my ad. My restaurant gets high and precise visibility and no others in the area receive that.

4. I can turn the campaign on and off in a day. No term limits. No multi month commitments. If I can track or sense its working and the payback is positive, I'll keep it up. If its not working stop running ads.

5. Run the ads on a regional logical basis. Where does the restaurant draw customers from? Is it a couple of adjacent towns? I'd run it for those towns. Possibly I'd extend it a bit.

6. Adwords isn't rocket science. Google adwords does offer strong and explanatory help. Alternatively get someone to set up the campaign for you and who charges a set up fee. Stay away from agencies or some notorious firms that have glossy advertising packages but mark up google adwords by 2-3 times.

7. One advantage is that as you run adwords you will see information that you won't find elsewhere. You'll get exact keyword data on the clicks that hit your ad. You'll get precise volume data of impressions. Which keyword phrases are used the most to find restaurants in your town and representing which types of menus. Its really invaluable knowledge.

8. BE the first. You'll pay the lowest amount for that period of time that other restaurants aren't flocking to do this. Meanwhile you'll be the one with visibility; with a link to your site, with a phone number, with an address.....all the attributes that Google has starved from every other restaurant in your neighborhood.

9. If you are being called (harassed) by yelp to run ads and you are thinking about it...run a campaign in google for less per month than the yelp offer. See how it works. Then run yelp. See how that works. See which is more effective.

Okay...so this falls into Google's nefarious plan (as I see it). But be the first, the one doing it for the least money, and hopefully the one that gets the most benefit.

Miriam: I wanted to add one thing. When the crap pack came out last year, it was so obviously a terrible user experience. There was no outcry in the SEO Press.

The change was extraordinary: No map, no address, no link to the business. No phone number.

No outcry. Stunning.

It made me think of the Hans Christian Anderson childrens' story. A classic tale. Repeated endlessly over many generations...but I suppose missed by the SEO press...and then possibly the greater press.

WME: We spoke to the fact that the hotel and restaurant verticals are different in at least one very significant way. The hotel vertical is very heavily monetized via Google and via Internet travel agencies and booking operations. Google has a "pac" of booking choices. It makes money off of that.

Still its interesting. Search for hotel "any city" such as Melbourne, Au and the crap pack comes up with only 3 hotels. No address. No map. Not a link to the site. There may be an opportunity to book with a price showing.....or "alternatively" there are hotels opting out of the "booking deals via google. They have no price, but they have a link: Visit the website.

My my. That is interesting. Some of the big hotel chains have opted out. I bet they are battling the severe monetization of bookings via the Internet travel agents and Google. Much to be discovered there.

One place where a sizable number of hotels have backed out of the "booking situation" is Ocean City Maryland. Its primarily a summer resort city in the US. Interesting that such a significant number of hotels don't want to pay booking fees.

I'd bet there is significant rumbling in the hotel industry. Booking fees alone are huge. Google, besides taking advertising money off of adwords is also taking booking fees. That is a battle with some very big players and its a more mature industry in working with the web than is the restaurant world.

But still if I'm looking at hotels in Melbourne Australia, I'd like to know where the hotel is located within the city. If I'm going to Melbourne its not to sit in my hotel room the entire stay. I'd like to know which hotels are closer and more convenient to the places I'm going to visit.

The above is elementary type of information. The Crap Pack deliberately doesn't give it. Its simply not helpful for base information.......

Frankly I doubt Google is significantly losing traffic. The restaurants may not be getting it from google with all those internal google clicks to get info...but I doubt the big Goog is losing traffic.

There has been no outcry how utterly miserable and purposeful this change was from google, which has all this contact info and precise info that is helpful and wanted and they are deliberately not showing it. If its not being highlighted by the media then the public is missing the change.

Its simply bad information. Years ago Google "won" the battle for majority share of search by giving good information. Now its purposefully giving bad information and there is better information out there from other sources. That message isn't reaching the public.

I was stunned when the crap pac came out. What could be a worse, less informative user interface? Its horrible information...or more precisely no helpful information. If you want to find out where the restaurant is, or contact the restaurant, or see its menu, or get reservations, or its hours, etc etc. You can't. Every single thing that a searching consumer might want is purposefully hidden.

Its hidden by a search giant that HAS each one of those pieces of info.

Stunning in that google local/maps/googleMyBusiness has for a decade been asking for very detailed identification information for businesses...and has presented that information to users. So what is going on????

I also would contrast restaurant searches with hotel searches in this way:

The hotel industry is HUGELY monetized. In fact google has its fingers in it in more ways than not. There are ads everywhere for hotels. Then there are booking opportunities....and google has a piece of that.

By contrast, in my views and views and views the restaurant industry rarely advertises in Google search. National chains do. Locals mostly avoid it. I'm astonished to see other verticals, and retailers that advertise a lot. But in my views there are VERY few restaurant ads.

What do you see? Compare it to other industries.

I know from back in the day when keywords were available to us that there were enormous volumes of searches for phrases such as "Restaurants/City" or "City/Restaurants" Also Pizza. Restaurant and Pizza phrases got enormous volumes of local search phrases; restaurants by town, restaurants by type and menu and town, etc etc. They were among the Most voluminous types of local search phrases. More than other products and searches.

And yet restaurants mostly avoid adwords.

So, since google doesn't direct sell to potential advertisers: They don't call on smb's. They don't "dial for dollars". They aren't yelp calling businesses....and they aren't their "partner" firms such as reachlocal or yodle or some others or the YP's that used to call......I think they are starving websites from google search traffic.

I think its subtle. I think they are trying to push up advertising from this industry. and they are doing it in a subtle manner by creating a variety of ways for searchers to NOT visit the restaurant site.

Meanwhile having given the PUBLIC the WORST possible user interface of non information....they aren't getting blowback from the public or the industry or anyone.

So they can get away with the most purposeful least helpful presentation of data.

Today when I search for restaurants in a meaningful way I'll use Yelp, or Bing, or Apple Maps, or Mapquest or any kind of other App. Why would I choose to use a search mechanism that has TONS of helpful data that they purposefully won't show. Its insulting at the least.

It should at least get a public and media outcry and google should explain why their search process is so purposefully non informational...especially in that they have the information.

At this point I'd say, "go get em" Yelp and Apple Maps and Bing. Google is insulting users around the world.

Miriam: Glad to see you wrote about this. The term "Snack Pack" is way too gentle and weenyish.

Its the Crap Pack. Or more specifically the NO INFO PACK. Its an absolutely terrible USER EXPERIENCE.

If I'm doing a search for restaurants in any town USA and now anytown Europe what I get is some google info, with as you say:

No Phone #

No Link to the restaurant site

No Address.

A street name, but NO ADDRESS. That doesn't help. Suppose the street is five miles long and goes through good and bad parts of the area. Suppose I'm visiting and I'm near one end of that street but miles from where the restaurant is located. What a joke.

WHY would google present information to users in this fashion. Its not helpful.

YELP has a GREAT directory of info on restaurants. Its great. Try it. Look for restaurants in ANY area. Its specific, its chock full of info and contact information, if the restaurant takes reservations via OpenTable you can access that and make a reservation. Its SO informational.

And we ALL KNOW that Yelp is often the small businesses worst enemy and one with a notoriously bad rep from the perspective of thousands of small businesses.

But its directory is INFINITELY more helpful and informational than Google's.

Lets lay it on the line.

This Crap Pack is insulting to users.

Google is doing it to starve traffic to restaurant websites. If I were the restaurant industry spokesperson I'd ask the feds to reopen the investigation into Google as a monopoly and see what is going on. I'm sure google is additionally doing this to starve traffic and try and get more restaurant money via adwords.

They should comment here and explain why they did this set up. Its purposefully atrocious. They should explain themselves.

Yes, Miriam: I believe we are on the same track. In general I have a difficult time coming up for interesting content that might connect a local smb with a distant town, certainly on face value a plumber trying to connect to a distant town and/or the law firm. My mind goes numb.

Fortunately there are clever people out there and they throw out interesting and diverse ideas....some of which could apply to either business. For me the best ideas come from people discussing just these issues and then some creative people come up with some excellent suggestions with models or themes that might apply to your particular smb or industry.

Its mostly been trolling through ideas and discussions where a gem or a spark of an idea brings up some form of content that might make for compelling content of any sort that could work.

Just get those pages titled to include the service/distant town name, though and it does give you a "fighting chance".

Nice article, Miriam. "The user is the new centroid" per David Mihm is an apt statement. I actually believe this has been in the works for some time. We have regional businesses, say similar to Dustin, above, but in fact in some of them we have a main city, then somewhere in the realm of 100 different towns in the metro area....plus some smb's in different markets with somewhat fewer towns...but still a lot. Over a period of time before the last google algo change that made this more pronounced we would see stark evidence of a changing pac dependent on where within the region somebody would search.

Its more pronounced now. All of your suggestions are strong, but what happens when you want to attract people from nearby neighborhoods within a larger city and/or from customers or clients from nearby towns.

If you take Dustin's example above and there are up to 60 towns in a metro region wherein say 4 of them have larger populations and then 10 have populations a bit below the largest towns, and there are another 10 with sizable populations, you really need to have visibility to be seen by all those larger communities....let alone all 60.

One thing that does work in this regard are organic pages that reference each of the larger communities...lets say up to 24 of them. Its not going to show on the PAC....at least not in most cases.

You need unique and compelling content. You need good titles....and you need some eye catching elements for the pages...such as might show vis a vis effective use of schema for events or other phenomena. Then if you are getting visibility for schema for events....you'll have to repeat them as events are transitory.

Its a real complex issue. Additionally of note, so many smb's in particular neighborhoods really need that additional business from nearby neighborhoods. Boy restaurants are prime examples.

The entire process is daunting. It takes a lot of work. Frankly I think google is both creating a more "even playing field' theoretically but one that is difficult to confront.

I agree and have had similar experiences as with Myles and David. On a couple of accts I'm trying to bust through the geo limits with extra work. Haven't gotten there ....Yet. but we'll see.

In the meantime organic efforts definitely work in this area. But don't go the way of auto generated exact same pages with the only difference being the name of a suburban town. Google catches that and devalues that.

This is the first survey in the 7 years I didn't participate in. I never take everything for gospel. You shouldn't. Its not.

Here is where its valuable IMHO. A lot of people work on responses. I know some of them, and some of what they do and some of what they look at or test. I communicate with some of them.

We all see different data and we look at different local smb's. Some are in very competitive arenas. Some aren't. Some are in cities with many competitors. Some aren't. Some smb's compete regionally. Some compete locally. Unbelievable variance.

Regardless of the statements in any one sentence in the report....the data, numerical scores, and aggregate knowledge of a lot of perspectives from a lot of people looking at an aggregate of many different situations.

In that context I like the aggregate weight of the analyses better than my single perspective. 2 heads are better than 1, and 30 heads are better than 2....and a variety of analyses give much value in my perspective.

There are indeed many terrific contributions and perspectives from many people. I agree with that statement.

I second your comments. I've been doing this stuff since about 2003 or 2004. I have a hard time following all this terminology. Unless you read everywhere all the time, its difficult to sometimes know what people are speaking about.

Boy, the above is a really interesting conversation. We had an incident with an smb with a problem. Google discerned the historic issue then called the business, asked a question and made an assumption from our response that was inaccurate. We had to keep working to correct the penalty. The penalty was removed. It took a good bit of work.

Is google going to make algo decisions based on 1 sample phone call to a business??? I hope not. Big hotels and restaurants that are chains go through a lot of personnel that can answer a phone. Does everyone who is trained on the phone for 10's of thousands of businesses have to be trained to answer a phone in a way that is Google smart above all else??

Take a look at the bottom 2 "impact points" on scoring in claim 14 of the patent.

Financial size and Age. WoWZIES. has anyone ever seen it, commented upon it or referenced it??? I don't recall any commentary. But those are potential weights in a SE ranking algo of "a very different nature" in my estimation, I wonder if those come into play, how they come into play, where they come into play (if at all) and more importantly will other metrics of that ilk weigh in on LOCAL SERPS????

Its questions of that nature that make me want to sit back with a local fave IPA and read the commentary from other voluble experts--> such as yourself!!!!!! :D

Hi David: Great job AGAIN. Sorry I didn't contribute this year. Lost track of time, and frankly I spend a way lot of time on the questionnaire. But you have an ever increasing number of participants. That translates into lots of experience, lots of expertise and numerical results that have meaning. Its infinitely better than the observations of any one individual. KUDO's Again

But I'm sort of a contrarian. I'll take exception with one part of your summary wherein you stated that the algo model posited by Mike back in 2008 still holds. I took part in that study as did you and others back then. Heck that meant gathering the data on a lot of smbs in different locations back then.

Unlike 2008 I can't even easily FIND a centroidin a city in a fairly easy way, as we did back in 2008. I believe that part of the analysis is null and void in 2014. Commentators believe that Google is delivering results that are relevant to the searcher's more precise location these days. I believe it, I sense it, I test it. I believe that has been occurring for a few years and its stronger now than ever. Google is DRAMATICALLY better at honing in on a searcher's location now than it was several years ago.

I've referenced in writing that from an adwords perspective Google has been drilling down to more precise locations for several years. We look at the geo elements offered in the dimensions tabs in adwords. We've been looking at that for several years. Over time and for several years the aggregate volume of "most precise location" data increasingly has become zip codes rather than a city. In other words rather than seeing most precise traffic and impressions from Cleveland, we'll also see most precise traffic from zip codes within Cleveland and traffic from Cleveland overall.

I think its pretty good data. When I cross checked the impressions and clicks traffic against our own data for smb's we see corresponding leads and sales from people who live in the zips within the cities where google has provided more granular detailed zip data on traffic. Google is better at identifying from where people click (or at least it believes its better). So now they are providing LOCAL serps that reflect that knowledge and that relevancy.

I think that part of the 2008 algo driven model is quite possibly null and void or dramatically lessened in impact.

Based on that experience back in 2008 it was difficult to ascertain significant weights for business types with many many signals. I suspect that remains true.

Google keeps changing things. So it is relevant to keep updating the annual article. And you are doing it. KUDOS!!!!

On that basis, with all that hard work, analysis, and depth of quality in your articles you have the right and privilege to support your favorite beer. Bully for you!!!! :D I respect your commentary. I'll look it up, see if its available in my neck of the woods and if so give it a try. :)

Overall great and helpful comments at an early stage to start the conversations going about how to deal with this enormous sea change.

I tend to always look at local sites. I have two references to the comments above. I think there will need to be other types of work arounds to this change by google.

I referenced this above: Google Webmaster Tools is amazingly UNFUNCTIONAL and unhelpful for a local site. It doesn't break down keywords on a local basis. The most granular or smallest locational information it gives you is at a national level. That is of no assistance.

On that basis one might hope that the dashboard for a local business inside google+ local might help. Not much value there IMHO. Lots of misinformation and/or a purposeful effort by google to limit and give less than helpful or transparent info:

A. You don't know the radius around an smb that generates clicks and impressions. Is it 1 mile, five miles a huge region, your town, the city??? You just don't know. Google won't tell you either.

B. They truncate or cut off keywords by geo area. No help at all.

C. They limit keywords to the top 10. If you have some totally irrelevant categories showing up....wham you get even less valuable information.

D. Over time the Places/Maps/Google+ dashboard has generated some very irrelevant and unreliable data.

So: No help there vis a vis a weakness via WMT.

2nd big issue which I think needs to be addressed differently than suggested above by Rand in that it plays out differently for smb sites:

Very often the first page of an smb site will show up first and highest for a GREAT Many types of phrases. That is a function of the PAC or Maps and that small bus sites end up having the first page show highest for a great variety of keywords.

I think the bundling of keywords against a page is a great idea. I just don't see it playing out well for local sites because of the PAC and the way the first page often dominates in Serps.

but otherwise its an excellent and thoughtful package of comments at an early stage dealing with a big set of problems.

Removing all keyword data is not just a hit on webmasters and publishers, its a hit on every entity across the globe with a website. Its a hit against every entity with a financial stake in its presence on the web from the largest companies to small shops and non-profits. And of course its a hit by a monopoly. They have all the information. We have none.

Its interesting. Google has been litigating to protect its right to access GMAIL so they can send ads there. Boy is that an invasion of privacy, far more serious than knocking out keywords.

Relative to what Rand suggested and related to small business accts: webmaster tools is a complete waste for local or regional sites. The last data I need is Google supplying us with data for that url based on total USA traffic. Completely a waste. Of course google provides similarly worthless data in the local dashboard. It is purposefully extraordinarily limited.

The other comments have merit for smb's imho. I'm not critiquing the comment on WMT..but for a local site....seriously google I don't want to know what traffic like across the country.

OTOH: Google if you can break down the traffic volume for my region in WMT; and you can: that would be helpful.

Morgan: I was one of the contributors this year and past years. I believe in links strength and do see very positive results on behalf of some smbs. I also vote for them. With all that let me add some caveats that may or may not be reflected within the survey results.

1. Most smb's can't afford the services of great link builders. They are small businesses with limited budgets. Excellent link builders are expensive and the service is expensive.

2. Link building as I'm sure you well know is so much different and much more difficult today than years ago. Google has eliminated so many of the old easier ways to get links and in fact has penalized methods that used to work. In fact in my mind Google currently penalizes methods that in the past in tacitly rewarded. Anchor text is a prime example. Too much anchor text= a penalty (its all relative).

4. Some of my sites have taken hits for some of those efforts that in fact go back years. They worked years ago. Now they cause penalties. Meanwhile I'm the same guy I was years ago. I didn't buy links then or now...but oh yeah...I did get those cheap links.

5. Quality links definitely work today. They work in overall seo and they will benefit local sites. But for little old smb's serving a local market with local products or services they are not easy to obtain in any fashion. Typically these sites don't have a "voice" into the larger world of the web where they might obtain great links for great content.

6. Yet they work. We have found that more recently with all these changes over the past 2 years that we need to do some of the same things great link builders do. We have to create "out of the box" kind of content that trandscends the localness of the site. We might have to do more work to "push" the content into a universe where it will gather links.

7. Now in our cases we have some local sites wherein we have organic visibility above the pac and we even have top of the pac visibility. Those types of rankings speak to the fact that link building works.

8. In some cases with operating businesses there are opportunities to create something from a content basis that can be link worthy opportunistic..but the business operators need to be part of this process and they can't afford the time or produce the effort. To grab those opportunities the seo has to be even more involved.

9. Overall my own experience is that small to medium smb's have a tough time overcoming these obstacles.

10. If you read through the vast amount of commentary by contributors to David's reports you will find suggestions on link building. Its implementing this type of work and getting compensation for some of it that could prevent its more wide spread usage.

Thanks for allowing me to participate again. As always I value the comments and insights as different participants are viewing and studying different aspects, sites, and verticals from their own perspectives.

I really prefer local apps to browser search on mobiles. I truly wonder how much local search is via apps. Certainly in the restaurant industry both yelp and Opentable are commenting that their mobile traffic is growing and I assume lots and lots of it is via apps.

On the other hand we see indications within our own smb's that mobile visitors tend to click on the pac results at a higher rate than via desktop. Not a scientific study but through observations via various quirks.

On another topic I'm stunned by the commentary about the carousel. It seems to me it hits two industries hard: hotels and restaurants. In their own right they are different...hotel searches might be dominated by out of town searchers and restaurants might be dominated by local searchers. Both industries, and especially hotels have to put more value on reservation visits than mere search visits. Reservations bring in income. Searches may bring in income or they may not. Virtually all hotels are connected to reservation sites yet only a small percentage of all the restaurant sites are tied to reservations...(though they tend to be the big ticket restaurants).

It seems to early to me to make strong observations on the effects of the carousel. Its only been around for a short time. We need studies; studies of massive amounts of traffic to see the effect. My early guesses are that the carousel with up to 20 different choices will disburse traffic to many sites. Does anyone have data at this point? The other thing about the carousel and restaurants is that ...there is an industry that gets a tremendous volume of traffic via mobile...and the carousel isn't showing on mobile.

All in all, its always good to get the opinions of a lot of observers and testers on many facets of local search to see the aggregate analyses and comments.

Mike: Great post. It does require some re reads as it is long and covers a lot of territory; a lot of topics and sub topics.

But I'll comment on your first comment: State searches. I have some smb's in smaller states in the East. Google was showing maps associated with smaller Eastern states for a longer time period than your reference back in 2010. After all, Rhode Island and Delaware...they are sort of like great big cities.

While this might not work for huge states, in smaller states people will search using the state name frequently. Its not that big a deal to travel from one end of a small state to the other end for purchases of goods and services that are either bigger in price or more rare in availability. Cars is an example, or certain medical services or other services that are either pricier or more rare in availability.

Now it wouldn't work for a person in Southern Utah to look up an emergency plumber (that is plumber--not plummer ;) ) that is located in Salt Lake or Northern Utah...but for big ticket items or certain services folks will travel longer distances.

Maps don't always show, as you referenced above. That is why I love organic for search phrases with the state name/product or service. A specialist in a certain type of skin cancer surgery in Utah could be picking up patients from around the state,...heck they might be picking up clients for regional terms for a series of states in the region.

So in those cases I like organic SEO results with a focus on both the state name and service/product.

In can be powerful. In a competitive environment that particular combination is sometimes missed. If you focus on it one can get some very dominant visibility. If you really dominate...you might "steal" some maps visibility ....but that is a different and rare case.

If and when an smb does achieve domination on that topic the smb can get leads from further away than the business is used to. What a gift!!!! It really works with those higher priced ticket items, or more rare topics.Great long article, Mike. So much territory that you covered. So much knowledge. Kudos.

Nice review, David. In one context though Local is such a broad concept that it opens the door for so many changes, that probably merit breakdowns into verticals and categories of types of purchases. For instance researching, investigating, and buying legal or specialty medical services are a dramatically different process from getting a local pizza, figuring out where to meet your friends for dinner or a movie, or buying shoes or other merchandise. In fact you don't need to buy shoes or merchandise at a local business, its all available on the web. All of which is to say that as search is omnipotent, and google dominates search in the US and in many lands there are interesting opportunities to break into aspects of local, that open doors for various other applications and methodologies. Since mobile is so strong, there are endless opportunities for apps with specific appeal to certain verticals. On top of that there are totally different data bases of user actions on the web. Google has data on search, Amazon has data on sales and conversions, and facebook has data on friends interactions, customer demographic data, etc; all of which play into different aspects of Local purchases. Its a very large world.....all sometimes categorized under the description of "LOCAL".Outside of google I think that opens the door for fascinating opportunities for verticals, mobile apps and other possibilities.But having said that Google is clearly still the king with its hands in Local everywhere. I would hope in 2013 they clean up the dashboard and make it functional. I hope so for the sake of businesses, their SEO's and for Google's sake. As a business operator I mostly don't want something that is prone to endless errors. If my business is pretty consistent and non changing, I don't need a lot of functionality in the dashboard. And frankly the data they provide is worthless and mostly a tease to entice smbs into other google services. Conversely if I'm a restaurant with changing menus and specials, a theater with new movies, a large store with varying specials and new products, the dashboard simply can't handle any of that. All of that opens the door for varying apps from other smaller more specialized and more nimble providers.Maybe if Google could fix the dashboard they could also handle some of the appropriate applications and interesting updates that other providers are now tackling. Nice review David. It provokes a lot of stimulating commentary on top of your astute comments.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm seeing a change today similar to what I saw on 12/13. Its hitting a local smb, one of ours. We are ranked first for two phrases with a certain geo modifier, wherein we've been 2nd forever. On one of them we are seeing an accompanying onemap. For us its a change in scope similar to what we saw around 12/13 only in this case its a positive result for our smb versus a negative result.

Its possible Google "filtered" on the vertical (or phrase) thereby also impacting wikipedia for a day or so, while simultaneously impacting the vertical on the maps sideIts just an idea. I was discussing this w/ Mike Blumenthal who monitors these things far more closely than anyone. As I understood him he referenced changes that impacts the "PACs" as showing up sometimes w/ "location prominence" limited to w/in a city, sometimes within a larger area, and sometimes it appears to hit just some verticals and not others, or just some metro areas and not others. Maps Serps seem to have some reflection of strict seo besides Maps oriented impacts. Of course my thoughts are simply "wild assed stabs in the dark". Its simply we got hit w/ a maps generated change over the same days...and I thought I'd throw out some ideas...especially as BBQ is a word that will generate various types of local serps changes...and its possible those changes could show up in your measurements. But who knows??? :D

Dr. Pete: How do your analytics take in the impact of changes created by via google maps results? For instance for one of our local industries (actually a niche vertical) we saw changes in SERPS rankings that were a reflection in a change in probably the "location prominence" as affected by Google Maps. It showed externally in google.com and was probably initially reflected in maps.google.com.The simplest description seemed to be that Google had narrowed the geographic sense of "prominence" to city borders as opposed to city plus suburbs. It was reflected internally in the Maps index with changes in the Maps Serps. It also manifested itself in the google.com serps.Clearly that shouldn't impact something like wikipedia directly for BBQ, but it could have impacted a variety of sites many of which could clearly show up prominently and could be subject to impacts from Maps and the "7 pacs" for local queries for those phrases. BTW: While google has generally changed "location prominence" on and off for different verticals in different cities, the changes seem to last for about 1 month. In this case though we've only seen the change lasting about 5 days.

David: I suppose one could call your comments as "astute and voluble". As Mike pointed out to me now his are "astute and voluble". I know of one other "astute and voluble" commentator. This club is getting pretty big.

That is a huge opportunity for MOZ, a winner for David, and a potential great opportunity for expanding your skill sets to assist local smb's and those who service local businesses. David is clearly one of the more articulate and thought leaders with regard to local SEO and a good man to boot.Congrats to both of you and good luck moving forward.

Terrific insights on "big data" overview of the ppc market place and then connecting it to seo and keyword work.One question on point #5 at top. You presented overall global cpc data on average click costs for the 10 highest spending industries. You also referenced that US cpc's are higher in general than global averages.Do you have breakdowns for those industries for US click data? Also are there any other national data sets of interest with dramatically higher or lower costs.(all my work is local and US...but I thought I'd broaden the question for all) :DThanks for the data and the insights. Excellent work and a far more insightful look into this google income stream and how it breaks down than we would ever see from google.Dave

In terms of smb sites, I rank high rankings (really being #1) as the most critical step.

2ndly Internally the site should be well done.

And then there are reviews. Reviews are like lovers...they just pull all the emotion out of folks...especially the smb operators who receive good reviews, bad reviews, get spammed by competitors, create spammy positive reviews, etc etc. its quite a circus.

I find it fascinating to hear how incredibly pissed off some smb operators are about high volumes of filtered yelp reviews (basically if the person writing the review isn't a yelp regular). The entire thing creates incredible emotional turmoil of all types...and as an smb operator..we have experienced both the pros and cons.

Of note, both Nyagoslav and Linda as "top contributors" at the google places forum have access (I was gonna say more access) to some of google's ways and thinking on topics...but its so hard to get access as they (google) are incredibly tight lipped on everything they do.

Of further note...if everyone who ever wrote a deliberate attack spam review got note of the google algo that assigns "trust" to google+ users....oh crap...it would send thousands of attack reviews to the top of the heap.

So I'd say if all the negative spam review writers of the past got wind of the bonus one gets for signing up for google + and okaying all those old reviews...then yeah...they would be dangerous as hell.

Miriam: We have a couple in place in some of the smb's but not in all. Of the one's we have we were using them sporadically. Mike B and I were discussing review phenomena the other day, and within the conversation he referenced something to the effect (I'm paraphrasing) Its not a race for the most reviews. I've agreed with that. We don't have thousands, or hundreds for any business.

Of critical importance with regard to reviews IMHO is how the smb operates. If its not working great...be careful about asking for reviews. Fix those things first internally so that the positive reviews will flow naturally from great customer service.

On a separate issue, I was reading below about the experience w/ the Suzuki dealer in Wichita and went to their blog piece. Some of our smb's similarly have hundreds of paper responses (reviews) that go back a long period of time. We used them for internal reviews...and we would take great one's/ put them in a little picture frame and post them on a wall, or create a book of testimonials. (back in ancient days).

On still another issue, I take slight issue with one of Mike's suggestions...but do so in a manner of degree. It has to do with spreading reviews. I agree in principle and with points about application. Its the end result with which I differ. One of the issues with spreading reviews is that some of those sources don't show well on the web. We have SMB's with some spectacular reviews in some other review sites....and frankly they get SO LITTLE traffic. What is the point??

But to counter that point I was doing a search for a recovery phrase and bam..right toward the top I saw a city search page with a couple of hundred reviews. I'm pretty sure the smb applied the technique of asking for paper reviews as with the Wichita dealership and some of our smb's. Then I'm pretty sure the smb just jammed posted them on city source with tons of names. Possibly the smb asked permission of the reviewers. Possibly not.

The key difference in visibility though was that the smb and/or its seo ran enough links into that city search page that it vaulted over other sites and is ranking highly for both name (recovery searches) and discovery searches. Interesting, IMHO b/c I don't see citysearch ranked that highly.

Finally I refer to that vis a vis the strategy of reputation management for your business...especially for name/branding searches. It works to get a bunch of sites ranked highly for your name. Generally its been suggested and I've stayed away from pushing review sites up high. It could always invite the spammer/competitor/ or angry customer to rip you on a site that is highly ranked.

But the citysearch situation presented a different situation. If one keeps generating positive reviews into that page...even if a competitor or angry customer writes disparagingly abt your smb...if you keep adding positive reviews...you'll probably overwhelm the neg ones and bury the negatives.

Lots of little issues and specifics with regard to reviews. I know one thing. Google is the only place that seems to "lose them"....and is now aggressively filtering them via algo. If and when I get google reviews I copy them. If they are good they can always be used for a testimonial page. W/ google, pretty much unlike any other website...there is the possibility of losing them.

How can such a big smart successful web business with its "great" algo's...be so inept and lose reviews?????

Nice job reporting about this issue at MOZ. Its the latest of a series of significant changes at Google Local, seemingly this and the last one causing immense problems for many SMB's and generating enormous volumes of complaints. Just 1 and 2 months ago the google local forums were flooded by smb's whose records were moved to the dreaded "we currently do not support this location status" meaning...the business no longer showed in a Google Maps format. Now reviews are being removed by google, almost assuredly via "filter algo's". Whether legitimate or not there are huge volumes of reviews being removed.

There have been quite a few times over the years where google changes its local policies pretty quickly: In this case, as you referenced they are somewhat reversing themselves from what they permitted only this past Dec. This past Dec--they wanted reviews....and okayed review stations...now it appears they are having problems with them.

Do you have problems? I'd blast away at google and see if some of the tight standards they recently set that might block legitimate reviews can be lifted.

Worthwhile article IMHO. I've been working on behalf of local smb's for the past 9 years. I've focused heavily on 3 areas, seo, local, and ppc. I've been a commentator on David Mihm's article on "best practices in local SEO for the entire 5 year, period, etc.

All our smb's are services. Price points for our types of consumers are relatively high, essentially requiring phone conversations or meetings. Possibly 1% of our sales come without phone calls or meetings.So on top of seo, local, and ppc, focus on the phone and meetings in order to generate revenues is critical.But back to the main topic. For search I'm mainly focused on the top of the page and for local smb's that means 3 things: seo, local/maps/google+local/ and ppc. They are all critical. Frankly the long tail is also critical and that means, both seo and broad phrase ppc. They both work. The long tail is a lot about content, and its effective to work by studying keywords, your own traffic and ppc.Here is what we have discovered after about 9 years.

SEO is tougher Google has gotten smarter, more competition.

Maps/google+local is extremely helpful but google's management of it sucks meaning its subject to the worst kinds of problems that are subject to crappy google service.

seo algos and maps algos continue to change over time. What used to work doesn't work now. It is a continuous changing environment

ppc is critical and vital both in terms of obtaining traffic and learning...even more learning subject to google blocking a growing amt of organic traffic keywords. (that sucks imho)

We work in moderately competitive arenas. One thing we have seen repeatedly over time with different of the businesses and in different regions. When competitors slack off ppc, we gain traffic and revenues.

A second thing we've learned is when competitors run groupon's or other direct attention grabbing promotions their search traffic increases for branding searches. Isn't that helpful? I'm learning which other marketing elements work. PPC gives me a feel for the name branding effectiveness of different businesses. That is incredibly helpful. The knowledge from ppc data guides a lot of our efforts. Its extraordinary from a knowledge perspective.

Here is something that absolutely kills. With ppc and regional campaigns I measure the RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS of total seo and total "top of the page" awareness.

For instance with these smb's I have some killer positions for discovery phrases (as opposed to recovery or branding phrases) One maps, 2 or 3 organic listings at positions 1, 2, and and the #1 position in ppc.

When I compute total clicks on that phrase it comes in at a high percentage against what I call demand...or total ppc impressions for the phrase. (to do that I have to do some calculations and spread not reported organic traffic to the targeted keywords.

Then compare that to kyword phrases that are similarly valuable for conversions that don't have that kind of dominance on the top of the page. WHOA...big difference in percentages of demand. But what it does do is give us guidance on further seo efforts.

But I go back to something. When competitors don't run ppc we benefit;. What is more telling?

This is a terrific article full of excellent ideas. Its general principles go beyond infographics. I'm currently struggling with distributing what I know is great content for a particular small smb and its web site, with very limited readership, primarily responsive to people searching for a local service. The site while well ranked for its topic/vertical and on a local basis gets no viewership in any capacity outside of that. The site also has, I'm pretty sure, the largest FB fan base of any business of its kind...but again these people are mostly not web oriented from the perspective of spreading "stories".

In fact, to date, most of the responses I've gotten from "pushing the content out.....have been requests for advertising from some different sources// or funding from others. LOL (I'd be laughing harder if the results weren't so crummy.).

I knew we had limitations of several types before starting this, but the content was so strong and several outsiders acknowledged it.

The article in question is simply an amazing testimonial with very interesting commentary and perspectives for a far wider audience.

Some of the principles described above are relevant to this article and some other pieces we are preparing including infographics.

I knew going into this, above all....that regardless of the quality...if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it...its as if there never was a sound. And great content/infographics without readers is a waste of effort.

Bill: I keep looking at the results from different perspectives. I'll use a different keyword phrase, I'll run the query again and again from neighboring towns and communities.

On the one hand there are powerful signs that distinct localization occurs wherein the top of organic results show a list of doctors, dentists, divorce attorneys, etc at the top of organic results for that particular town. It could be a statistical model attached to millions of queries in the past// it could be very connected localization//what do I know// it could be both. I do know that google has deep data sets and attempts to vary its UI (presentation of information) in a way that seems to best satisfy that logic.

On the other hand, looking at some variations of the "divorce attorney" search Mike did in Las Vegas, I see other examples where both local websites (firms, smbs) and/or a national site such as findlaw have powerful strict SEO signals (links/links/ and more links/ on top of anchor text) :D that will push a page from a site (be it national such as findlaw or local such as hugginslawfirm either above the PAC results and/or above the PAC or a separate #1 with PAC signals.

The entire presentation is vastly different. Severe localization appears to be very important and severe and focused SEO (links/more links/linky links/ and anchor text'ed links) :D can have dramatic effects.

Having said that....and I've been closely observing local stuff for a long time.....this is only Google's latest presentation. They have changed the way they present local infoamtion many times in the past few years. Its actually consistently subject to timely consistent change.

Now back to something you referenced about statistical data sets. Suppose that is significant and it impacts the Google UI and presentation from time to time. Suppose this form of presentation radically changes user behavior.

UH UH UH OH. They'll probably change the darn thing again!!! LOL.

Mike wrote a terrific article with lots of interesting examples. So much to look at now!!

Mike: Great article. So why didn't people publish? One thing I've been doing is scrutinizing the impacts and opportunities like a hawk. I think you've done a tremendous job of articulating some of them. There may be others.

On a slightly different tangent, I actually think Google has been subtlely testing this for over 1 year. I saw 2ndary terms being localized about 1 year ago, brought it to Bill Slawski's attention and we were trying to figure it out--> he with logic attached to various SE patents....me w/ wild a$$ed guesswork...but it was definitely occurring. We saw it on a variety of sites with what I'd describe as secondary terms wherein the rankings were being localized. Neither of us published at the time...and it was subtle rather than obvious as it is now. Bill, though thinks the two things are somewhat different...

Now its very obvious.

I liked your suggestions. I've been seeing differences based on what appears to me to be highly weighted toward the strict SEO side and links.

One other thing I've noticed is what I'll call the "relative strength" of a site for phrases/page. Findlaw and the law firm above it in Las Vegas may point to some clues. Findlaw doesn't have a las vegas address but its a big strong site...and I did a short cut analysis. findlaw's first page TBPR is a 7 and its Las Vegas Page is a TBPR of 4. Huggins, the law firm ranked above it in your example in Vegas has a first page TBPR of 3 and an address.

Anyways...findlaw probably needed all that anchor text to get seen for las vegas. But I'd look at anchor text for Huggins versus other law firms in vegas to ascertain seo strength and potential links. Is Huggins significantly or measurably stronger for anchor text focused on "divorce attorney" and even w/out the geo modifier of las vegas.

I believe we've seen examples from the earliest days with G Places/formerly G Maps....wherein link strength always impacted Places/Maps rankings. Every time I saw a huge exception to what should be the norm it appeared that strict seo concerns could explain the exceptions....at least IMHO.

I think if I were a local seo I'd make sure I was subscribing to one of the serious link tools such as Moz's and others. Can't ignore them, IMHO otherwise the competition will pass you by.

Don't ignore Places and your suggestions are strong. GEt strong Places signals. I follow a lot of leads into the businesses and its clear to me that Reviews help closing sales. If you only have an organic listing sitting above Merged rankings you may get leads...but you aren't getting the power of those reviews.

Great article. I think you are the FIRST WRITER WITH SUBSTANCE and examples to show the impacts. Bravo!!!!

Information of this type is extremely critical of huge value, leads to enormous expenditures, etc. A sample size of 8 is far too small. More critically, who were the 8 people? Were they 8 staffers? 8 geeky nerds (using your wordage from the paragraph at the top)? Very curious.

Pictures and representations like this are extraordinarily powerful and convincing. I practice lots of Local SEO. I have strong faith in the effectiveness of the 7 pacs. Through a variety of businesses I've seen first hand the power of the 7 pac/ the blended 7 pac (almost a year old now) and most vividly 1 boxes having been both on the WINNING AND LOSING side of them for serps for various businesses.

Visuals within serps are powerful indeed. The heat maps focused on the videos and the product inserts into google serps were very powerful also. Finally I found it interesting and revealing that the heat maps on the right hand side of the page, showing maps and PPC ads also attracted significant traffic. Looks to me like a PPC ad on the right hand side at the TOP beats the bejeebers out of an organic SERP at probably 7,8,9, or 10 in standard SERPS.

Geoff: Nice article. Thanks for including me on the list of tweeters to follow on the bottom of the article. I'm Dave Oremland and I tweet under /localoptimizer

Heh: I was wondering how a lot of real SEO's were following that account as of the last few days....and now I know. SEOMOZ is a powerful voice in the SEO world. (and for the last few days I've only had gibberish, jokes and comments about bin laden, with virtually nothing of substance on Local SEO.

Geoff: Very concise article on developing a Google Places profile that is consistent and that won't set off a potential google filter against possibly spamming the Places Index.

I basically agree with comments by Linda Bouquet above. Linda is clearly one of the people that knows her stuff. I'll comment a bit more on some of her suggestions.

I agree wholeheartedly with her that since 10/27/10 the changed presentation of local results by Google has changed the game plan. Rankings are profoundly more impacted by standard SEO methods than by Google Places elements, at least IMHO. For many it has created a dramatically different game.

Regardless, I'd do everything possible to get a clean G Places record, as suggested above by Geoff. I'd also use deep NAP (name, address, phone #) research as suggested by Linda to clean up bad data. Its essentially no more complex than using advanced search methods ie. put your business name or some alternatives in a search and wrap " " (quotation marks) around your address or phone number A simpler way to do this is to use the above referenced Whitespark tool. I still like doing this by hand. I further like doing this several different ways to ensure catching all kinds of errors.

I'd spend some time building a lot of citations. Amongst others David Mihm has generated solid lists of popular citation sources including UBL that populates your record amongst a lot of important sources (for a small fee). I'd add pictures, videos, fill out all information and spend time on reviews: IMHO and experience Mike Blumenthal has a terrific set of articles on best practices for building reviews including a how to do so by smb operators.

I totally agree with things Mike and others have written on the topic. Good reviews start inside the business with great customer service.

Here is something I picked up and haven't published nor have I seen anyone else publish this:

If you find bad citation data that is screwing up your places information and either giving wrong information or causing duplicate records contact Google directly in the g Places forum. I'd suggest trying it in the following manner:

1. Be articulate and to the point.

2. Identify the bad record and tell google exactly where and what the problem is with the faulty citation that you discovered (probably by deep research) ie does it have the wrong name, address, phone number, etc.

3. Be courteous.

4. If you don't get a quick response contact one of several people in the forum that seems to get responses. Ask them to submit this on your behalf.

I'm not a huge G Places denizen, but of late my comments and questions under several different account names have gotten very fast responses. Either I've been lucky or Google Places has earmarked me. I don't know. There clearly are several commentators within the G Places forum who do get responses via Google.

5. I repeat be articulate, clear and precise.

I want to reiterate what Linda said about the current emphasis on organic ranking issues as opposed to Places issues as a source for traffic. I spend most of my time working on my own businesses which have different partners. Today I spent part of the time going over an issue with an operating partner and went back and looked at the impact of improving that SMB's rankings from something below #1 for a critical local keyword to #1 (currently is visable in a merged rank/link with organic and G Places informaiton).

When we moved his rank from below #1 (probably #2 or #3) to #1 we ended up about tripling traffic to the site for that phrase. With conversion rates for the phrase in a range of 7-11% on contacts we dramatically increased the # of conversions. Being #1 is worth a lot. I saw similar improvements for some other critical (though less popularly used phrase variations) for that business.

Very visable improvements. Now I got his attention to make sure he takes care of his part of the arrangement so that we can do something similar with some other critical phrases.

Anyway nice article, nice comments and good luck one and all to optimizing.

Ooooh. Great article. Must read for seo's that work with local businesses and the business operators themselves if they want to get high visibility within Google Places and the meshed results of Organic/Local

This is a great article. I've been active in Local and within Google Places/ formerly maps for years. I've also been a frequent complainer, commenter on the issues you have described. Its astounding the problems have lasted as long as they have and the fixes have been so rare. This is the first time I've seen a complaint from a major corporate entity. Bravo!!!!!

Your points are well taken. Consumers want accurate information. The print maps industry simply put more bodies and quality control into data to ensure it was more accurate. Digital mapping simply doesn't put the bodies into the industry.

Similarly Google Places doesn't put enough bodies into its environment to fix problems. On top ot that its an astounding black box. You contact them and they don't respond. There is no customer service. I'm actually astounded that as big an entity as Marriott is you can't get responsiveness. Basically no other business would get away with that kind of non-responsiveness. Google has been getting away with living in another world.

Marriott has to be one of the larger spenders on Adwords. In any other environment its inconceivable that Google hasn't been responsive.

The issues you've brought up essentially run the gamut of problems that many businesses face. I know in my cases I am so reluctant to alter or adjust a record that is in good condition in any way whatsoever for fear it can get caught in one of the myriads of problems you have described.

I'm in complete agreement that the "cluster" element of the algo needs to be addressed. For whatever reasons the engineering elements within Google decided this was an appropriate way to go to determine data...it simply creates endless problems. It needs to be dumped, or as in many other cases with google's algo's it needs significant filters to eliminate the data that is either inaccurate or non consistent with other data. Its not only the cause of problems, but the problems it creates will increase in time.

Consider the following: Every time a retailer closes or vacates a location and a new retailer takes over that space, the cluster element of the algo is going to show inconsistent data with information from an old business mixed with information from a new business. I see it all the time.

Currently the Feds are reviewing the Google prospective purchase of ITA, the company that controls software used by so many travel search engines. If the Feds aren't aware of this the travel industry should raise the problems with inaccurate information from Google Places compounded by the problem that they either don't or are slow to fix things and they simply don't respond.

I'd suggst you raise the ante on this issue. Frankly, I'm sorry to see that your large company has the same problems as so many other businesses but happy to see that a business with clout can so articulately describe the issues. Hopefully this will create serious greater awareness of innate problems within Google Places that haunt so many businesses and so many searchers simply looking for accurate information.

Lastly, Yahoo and Bing Local have similar problems. The issue in my mind simply is that Google's market share control of Searches puts the onus of making corrections on their backs first.

Nice experiment and description. I've done similar experiments and had similar results. Very telling with regard to the Tampa experiment. I'd suggest you do the same experiment only switch the locations for the other people to the suburb of Tampa and then see if you get identical results all across the board. Food and beverage will probably show very location sensitive results, especially for seafood in that:

A) there are probably a lot of seafood restaurants and

B) Unlike the Seattle example where Starbucks has tremendous authority and "leapfrogs" the other local listings (so to speak) probably the local seafood restaurants don't have that kind of amazing relative site authority.

The authority thing is probably usually rare but its great to obtain if you can. We operate some unusual businesses (there aren't a lot of them). The web competition isn't great. Amazingly we see some Starbucks kind of phenomena as in the Seattle example. For instance when we set a location for the business industry term in Wilmington Del for example we see some local results from the North in NYC and from the South in Washington DC. Its a function of authority/distance/local entities. Similarly we do the same search for the industry term in Connecticut and we see NYC websites/businesses outranking more local ones. Its not that the authority website is as strong as Starbucks its more that the local competition is weak.

One other thing on the authority element in the searches: When I searched locally for "coffee" as in the experiment, I saw the same kind of "authority" differentiation. The Starbucks merged record with organic ranking and local site information was at the top of rankings with some basic organic rankings on coffee....and then several spots down additional "merged rankings of local businesses/websites appeared. Just as in the experiment. But when I searched for "coffee shop" Starbucks was still first with an organic/local ranking...but the immediate following websites were all local businesses w/ merged organic/local rankings. Seems like Starbuck's authority is pretty damn strong for the term "coffee"....and conversely...the term "coffee shop" is such a locally oriented type of search term...that there isn't a website that dominates search (unless of course its Starbucks) :D I'd suggest using AOL as a proxy for Google to see what site ranks first for "coffee shop" without local impact.

This is a thoughtfully written and provocative article. Sorry, I'm late in commenting.

I am both an SEO who focuses on local issues and I do so for the businesses I and my partners operate. We have a variety of types of businesses and they operate in several metro markets. In some cases we have dominate positions in the search engines and others we don't. In some cases, with work we have taken dominate positions in the search engines.

Search marketing has an almost make or break impact on certain businesses. It drives enormous volumes of potential business. High organic and Maps/Local rankings can make or break a business like no other marketing/advertising impact in the past. IMHO, search has an almost monopolistic impact on advertising awareness. Look how many of you use a yellow page print directory, call 411, or use the white pages any more.

Google's rules are Google's rules. It isn't the law. There are inconsistencies. For instance, it appears that organic google (google.com) allows a local business to establish a variety of urls for a single business. If I used my region of birth (Northern New Jersey--with many small towns running into one another) I could set up a variety of business urls for organic search, each with a dot com such as, Verona_Video; West_Orange_Video; Montclair_Video, Caldwell_Video; Bloomfield_Video, Essex_County_Video, etc.

With the teeniest bit of effort I could rank highly for all of those phrases in organic search. Google.com allows that.

Assuming all the above urls related to the same address for only one location...maps.google.com doesn't allow that by its rules. Either they would find it or someone would report it and maps.google.com would take it down.

By virtue of limiting visibility to at max 10 businesses, a 10-pac showing on google.com is the dominant form of marketing visibility in the dominant form of access to the public for my business. Its that simple.

As much as I work to play within Google's rules, if it had dramatic impact on my business, I wouldn't hesitate to push the rules to ensure that my business has a good chance at surviving, especially considering the somewhat capricious rules that exist with regard to maps.google.com

By example, I know a few catering businesses and their principals, and a bit about the industry. I don't know Charleston caterers at all.

Regardless, I am aware its a great destination for wedding parties from other parts of the nation and particularly for beach weddings.

Look if the somewhat capricious rules of Google Maps make it impossible for a long term successful caterer who services weddings on the beach be visible to people from other parts of the nation looking for that service...I'd do whatever it takes to get that visibility. It is after all maps.google.com's capricious rules that are impacting my business.

Strong article. Controversial, subject to various interpretations, etc., but still a strong article.

2. The examples are enlightening--and they are of a high profile industry with large revenues. This industry and their members should hold Google and the other search engines responsible for getting accurate information and for correcting inaccurate information. The difference results in large losses of existing or potential information.

3. Having been fortunate to be included in David Mihm's survey...it is an excellent source for describing the elements that seem to impact rankings within Google Maps. IMHO, there are significant differences in rankings subject to how competitive a topic is within google maps.

4. Lastly I don't want to forget Matt and Martijn referenced above who also publish great stuff about local and Maps.

Dave

4. Nobody spends more time reviewing what seems to work and doesn't work within Google Maps then Mike Blumenthal at http://blumenthals.com/blog. Its worth a read as is David's current review and his review from the last year. One difference seems to be is that there is a higher level of agreement on what seems to impact rankings in G Maps than last year.

5. All of the versions of Local/Maps are full of inacuracies. You can see them in searches at Yahoo Local and MSN/Live/Bing Local. Spammers spammed the data sources that filled these elements of the search engines and the algo's that the engines have developed are in their early stages of development IMHO.

This is a great post. I run some small businesses. The logic behind this post is right on target. Look for those with whom you have existing relationships.

The only hard thing is that in the small business community some of the other business owners are so remote from their actual websites that ultimately getting the link, or the link you want, or the location of the link takes time. Its not a detriment to doing this, its just that one may not get links as quickly as you wish.

Of the many suggestions, there are a couple that if expanded upon can generate far greater results than one might imagine.

I think Mike's blog carries the best in depth coverage of the actualities of local search and his in depth coverage of activities at Google maps and Yahoo Local are terrific.

As referenced above if you want to catch some of the crazy stuff that is happening in Local read through the commentary at google groups for business owners.

If you want to see one example of some of the types of things that need corrections do an organic search for the following phrases:

Advertising agency (any city USA)

then do one for

Advertising agencies (any city USA)

(I hope they focus on fixing stuff like that)--they can...it just takes some effort.)

One last thing, there is enormous utility to what has been described as keyword expansion in organic search in which there one utilizes the long tail for both secondary terms for a business, its products and services and the long tail for all the potential applications of the local/regional geography.

I've been doing it for years. More relevantly JakedBake, who used to run a mini local search engine for several years described this process at Pubcon about 2 years ago. At the time Jake probably saw and concentrated on local search terms more than anyone else in the world excepting some unkown specialists at Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Even with the enormous visibility of Maps within Organic searches for the last 15 months or so, keyword expansion for organic search is quite effective.

Only 2 visits for underpants gnomes? How pathetic. I know it is a specific and probably highly competitiive phrase. There is no reason in the world why moz shouldn't be optimizing for the phrase and dominating the serps.

In fact after domination of the phrase it should become the official moz work uniform!!!!!!!

yeah!!!! he was a lazy bum. but pivot tables. ah that's the ticket!!!!

Still its good there is a a dislikiness index. its important. I wish the data was more accurate, though. When it comes to stuff like dislikieness and thumbsdownieness the info should be spot on 100% accurate.

This is a truly valuable post. But is Matt Cutts truly only the 11th most disliked "thumbs downed" poster here. I don't think so.

Thanks to the insightful and deep digging of SeanMag I too went into the google payola post. What an insight into "dislikeability and thumbsdowniness".

While DazzlinDonna garnered an impressive 16 dislikes and thumbsdownies....her dislikiness within that single Umoz post paled in comparison to what must be dramatically more disliked posters here. For instance MVanDeMar garnered 28 dislikies within that single post/comments and the aptly named WeAreSkittzoo garnered a cool 20 dislikies. Both were significantly more disliked than DazzlinDonna with a paltry 16 dislikes.

Yet it appears that neither of these disliked persons have posted enough at Moz to be within the top 100 posters and thus failed to make the vaunted "Most Disliked" list.

At least on this basis Matt Cutts's dislikiness falls to a paltry 13th and if we continued to review into the depths of MOZ membership his dislikiness might fall even further.

Yikes!!!!! It appears that Matt Cutts needs to work harder.

Meanwhile if DazzlinDonna expects a prize at being a highly ranked 5 she needs to rethink her dislikieness rating and status. It appears closer analysis suggests she should be ranked no higher than 7th. Further analysis might knock her out of the vaunted top 10.

Very comprehensive analysis within the SE industry. One thing I noticed is how well SEMOZ lines up against the other more established entities with regard to blogs linking to the site and feeds. Membership/readership numbers for Moz are very impressive and your paid membership seems to be a function of this.

Kudo's for the thoroughness of the analysis to see how well SE entities are "visible" , but even more kudo's for the growth of MOZ.

Impressive numbers Rand, especially the sign-ups and revenues from premium membership. You are breaking new territory with moz in this regard for seo. Good luck into the future.

Having been both a financial guy and a commercial real estate guy, it looks to me that your rent costs are high compared to other costs. One way to cut that down is to eliminate desks and make everyone work while standing against a counter or make em share chairs. That also improves office interaction amongst employees!!!!

Because we never listed in the Yahoo Directory I didn't want to reference it. I wanted to keep the article focused only on what was working for this particular site and how it might reflect the comments and research of others. I'd love to hear from others as to what they are seeing.

Of interest I just checked the Yahoo directory and there are many competitors listed in the directory even as we still have not listed there.

I have read often from others that paying for and being listed in the Yahoo directory has helped with their serps rankings in Y!.

having read some of the Q&A in certain varied topics, it appears moz is strong in some areas and not as strong in others. If you are focusing on MOZ premium membership as the primary source of revenues then I think you owe it to yourself and members to get rigourously strong across the board on as many issues as possible.

Are you doing a self examination with regard to moz strengths and weaknesses? If so how? If you identify weaknesses how are you addressing them to get stronger?

Is there a board at moz that oversees and advises with respect to growing the company and maintaining quality that contributes to growth?

btw: best wishes with your upcoming marriage, consumating the marriage, as mystery guest revealed ;) and growing the business.

One interesting aspect of that is the power of the long tail and 2ndary terms. The above research doesn't reflect that aspect but all those searchers polled above were using any of a million different variations on terms for their respective searches, some of which might reflect the most popular terms for a topic and some which don't.

All of the above research applies equally well to all the long tail and 2ndary terms used by searchers.

Focus on high rankings for a lot of associated terms, not just the single most popular term for a topic.

About 2 years ago you referenced the value and quality of cre8asite to a lot of unhappy forum members. A lot of us migrated over there. The quality of commentary remains high. On top of that the leadership (and the membership) is remarkably nice.

I'm not sure about my list of 5 but cre8asite was a great suggestion 2 years ago and remains an invaluable resource.

I'm not sure if the strictly business reasons for Google objecting to secretly buying and selling links (but more importantly link juice) have been significantly discussed in any venue....but I thought I'd reference it here.

No business wants or likes it, when someone else is making money off of its proprietary or expertise. If I managed to have the killer high ranked site for a very competitive phrase in Google and I was off secretly selling links (but more importantly) link juice so that others could use my success to rank better.....I'm earning money off of Google's secret algo's. That buyer might alternatively spend money on adwords, or spend money in areas Google has deemed appropriate to take advantage of its popularity.

For instance, if Randall McCarley had written the most entertaining popular book on advertising and marketing and living with a wife 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats, a pig and gold fish and I read that book, loved it, committed to to my memory and traveled around the country entertaining people with my version of that engaging story....you'd probably sue my arse off....for stealing your expertise.

A different analogy, with which I am familiar, having done commercial real estate for years.....is if a tenant manages to get a killer low priced lease in a market.....and rents skyrocket....and the space is worth significantly more than what the tenant is paying......landlords normally have strong language in the lease document that the tenant can't benefit by subleasing for a profit. The tenant may be able to sublease, the landlord has to approve the sublease....and any rent above the existing tenant's current lease rate....goes directly to the landlord.

Similarly, I think, behind all the talk and commentary from Google, they don't want webmasters making money from what they deem an unacceptable way of mastering google's algos and serps.

I'm not arguing for Google's point at all. I just think that is part of the equation....and why they are pursuing this on such a strong basis.

Frankly, I think the google effort at trying to police webmasters is one dumb hard to enforce act. If nobody's talking, and the links are placed cleverly and in perfect rythem with existing links on a site how are they ever going to know what is paid and what isn't.

I referenced this above, but in today's economy with a potential debt crisis occurring, with credit terms being tightened for a wider realm of activities, (not just mortgages) I would be loathe to borrow and would be very wary with regard to VC's or angels.

In either case, the investments may be equity (cash) but the investors may be heavily leveraged elsewhere and affected by a potential vast credit crisis which is just beginning to emerge and spread beyond the mortgage markets.

The indications are that this credit problem will be much worse than what happened during the first crash of the dot com period.

I first hand experienced the much larger debt crisis of the early 90's. Its a bad experience to work with intense pressure on your borrowed money.

Didn't you have this opportunity a year or two ago and posed a similar question before.

VC funding can change a lot. The dynamics and operating style of your business would change dramatically with a discipline, focus and drive on profits.

What are the vc's looking for as an exit strategy for their investment. Will they want the company sold at some point, do they want a regular roi on investment or some combination of both?

Can you internally handle the changes that the type of growth you envision with that type of money would mandate.

Can you manage lots of people, hire managers to manage lots of people, monitor the progress and potential profitability of a lot of projects at once, and maintain an atmosphere that you enjoy and works for you?

How much input would the vcs have.

Finally, we seem to be moving into a liquidity tightening period of time which hasn't hit the US since the early 1990's. That means there is a credit and cash crunch.

Frankly what is the cash/equity/debt structure of the vc's. Will they have outside pressures from other investments that could force them to put more pressure on MOZ?

Lots of things to consider. It would be real nice to get a lot of investment cash from an entirely benign, safe source with an ability to give you tons of help in areas where you might need it and won't bug the crap out of you in areas where you feel comfortable. (Like if my Dad had an extra $5 million and wanted to give me a chunck to "play/invest" with" ) VC's aren't like that....but if there are some you are speaking with that have some of those characteristics...that would be nice!!!

What a complex issue. I can't help but thinking that there is a simple business reason behind the Google effort to uncover secretive selling of link juice.

It pulls money that could be used for what Google has determined to be acceptable ways to obtain better rankings and into areas where google has determined on its own....that these methods aren't acceptable.

Google has consistently worked algorythemically to fight what it considers spamming. In many cases this has resulted in far better rankings and logic to its serps. It should be dedicating more resources to continuing this process.

Imagine if Google, while maintaining the logic behind link juice, establishes "thresholds" for link juice. Then it starts reevaluating rankings based on criteria as EGOL suggested. Imagine the confusion in the ranks from SEO aware webmasters who can't figure out why their sites with 1 million links rank well below sites with 1,000 links.

Wouldn't that have the effect of diminishing "secretive" sales of link juice.

I'm not sure.....but it sure as heck would make for interesting debates.

It didn't run yesterday but it did run today. Its a nice report. I very much value anchor text reports. There are a couple of them out there, but none of them does a thorough job of accessing every anchor text in every bl. The more the merrier giving a more complete picture both on my sites and those of competitors.

It is now 1 month after this blog post. here is a nifty one....I checked google for rankings for the phrase seo at google....

and seomoz is ranked 6th....not 15th.

How do you think that happened? After this blog piece did you pick up links w/anchor text for "seo at google"? Did you obtain links specifically for that phrase? did you add some internal work, internal links or headers for "seo at google".

Congrats on reclimbing the ranks. now I'm too lazy to check for the site w/3300 links and footer links to lingerie...but I'm assuming its neither the google.com site or the mattcutts blog.

Great article. A different reference got me to return to it. I was wondering about the 1 million plus links.....and the drop in rankings for the phrase SEO in google.....and ranking below a site that has 3300 links.

I'm guessing that the phrase seo in google is one of a number of secondary phrases that moz targets and/or reviews.

Still the link differential is startling - no overwhelming from a rankings perspective.

It points to the many varied aspects of G's ranking algos. It makes me reflect on a change G made in early 2005 that changed the way local businesses were found in search wherein gross numbers of links, link power, link juice, etc. were deemed less important than on page structure that emphasized clear (and even partial) descriptions of an address and location....and a simple internal link structure within a site to that address information.

Further I acknowledge and agree that accurate and more relevant reporting about volume of links might be better if you eliminated site wides and duplicates from a url....but you'd have to do that w/ every site that you compared yours to....and that takes a lot of time.

So while gross numbers of links are important, vital, and critical to competitive rankings--there are these other factors that also lend weight to rankings--including the strength of links.

I'm still wondering--and may have to look at what seo in google and lingerie have to do w/one another.

IMHO the article is too long, could be better organized, and if I was thinking link bait should be re organized and retitled to reflect xx# of ways to optimize a local site. LOL

Going forward I'd pay equal attention to keyword expansion for organic serps and exactly and how the different LOCALs and G Maps algos work for the engines. I'd also spend more time on testing and experimenting w/ social media and somehow getting a local toe into a rapidly expanding, ever evolving aspect of the web.

I have to disagree on what a local business should do. First, let me say that I've optimized a local business over a couple of years and it has paid off. The process started several yrs ago: A quick rundown on progress and results;

Since optimization started we have quadrupled or quintupled monthly traffic. All elements of traffic has grown considerably including direct through bookmarking, direct url (navigation) SE traffic, link traffic, etc. We were able to compare- our traffic to competitors (more on a national basis than a local basis) but our traffic was about 2.5-3 times that of a major similar business in a similar sized market--and when we compared against chains cumulative basis and against their "average traffic" per city we have had tons more.

On an overall industry basis our industry tends to convert about 15-25% of all who ultimately contact us. Of the 15-19k a month who see us on the web plus other sources--we may still only get 1k-2k contacts/month. If we convert 25-30% of contacts in a month w/2k contacts--great month. Convert 15% of 1k contacts in a month --bad month.

How did we do it? Very high rankings. The rankings are definitely long tail. We compete on first page of SE's for the main industry phrases.....but really the main SE value are in long tail terms that reflect combo industry phrases and relevant geo phrases.

One other thing....Our content isn't smooth and our look isn't the best but our content emphasizes the most important reasons for buying--again and again. Business owners know what motivates buyers. Use their knowledge.

We need as much link building as we can to compete regionally. We are fortunate to rank high for generic industry phrases...but we also buy ppc on a regional basis for the industry phrases.

Organic ranking is more vital than G maps or Y or MSN local. Both are important...but organic and/or ppc outweigh maps.

Many businesses see a lot of long tail variations for their products/services. That is key. Cover em all. organic search will respond...but the various maps don't always show well for phrases beyond the major ones. My experience from several businesses is that the aggregate total of the secondary business phrases outweigh the #1 phrase.

Cover lots of territory on geo phrases.

The best description of this process that I've seen was by BakedJake at Pubcon in Autumn '06. His talk was summarized in SERoundtable. I've referenced it at www.seorefugee.com/forums in the geo section. When he spoke about it he was then in charge of TrueLocal and had to have seen millions of local queries. I've repeated the process several times....but I haven't seen the volume of traffic or terms that he has seen.....and it worked each time for me.

The difference between any type of SE ranking whether its organic, a version of maps, in any kind of vertical directory or yellow pages is that a business is subject to a ranking mechanism. That is unlike placing a large display ad in a newspaper or placing a large display in a hard version of YP. The large display ads stand out on there own....versus being subject to a ranking system. (there is an exception with some kinds of vertical directories...but that exception is normally expensive.--you get a large/exclusive single page in a directory for your business service and city/state/region)

The only thing I'd ad to Jake's suggestions was to optimize to get to the top of rankings. G organic and G maps use different algos...so you have to work on both....and they are different.

One other thing I noticed was that when G maps was at its most visible.....it was showing for a large number of phrases--they seem to have both cut back on the # of phrases but expanded their geographic coverage.

When G maps was at its strongest it had to have seriously cut into the viability of industry verticals etc.

With that in mind....if the business can afford it....I'd say optimize your own site....or that of your client. Do ppc.

Lastly, its a lot less competitive; hence easier; to optimize for a local region than nationwide--Business law firm Baltimore will be less competitive than business law firm. If the business can afford big local advertising via other local media (tv, newspaper display, radio, yp display ads....it can afford local seo optimization and local buys for ppc.

I wouldn't set/forget either. Local businesses are competitive. We were sitting pretty--stopped doing stuff and lost some of our vital rankings.

there are other ways to market locally. I spoke a while back with a significant local business that had to have revenues in the several million $/year range. I haven't spoken with him recently...but this guy remarketed his business through local email purchases. He dropped very expensive newspaper display that cost him in the 6 figure range annually. He was very courteous with emails....making it easy to drop his emails if you grew tired.

What were his emails like? Great content with updated info or rich descriptions of his products. Very friendly.....very inviting. His business was doing great--last I spoke w/him.

So there are lots of ways to skin the cat....but if the customer can afford it....optimize locally!

If I was looking for small/local businesses in an area (in the States--I can't comment on the situation in other nations) I'd qualify the small businesses by looking at their yellow page print advertising.

If they have large display ads...they can afford SEO services. If they have 1 line advertising....maybe they can't. I'd check on their media buying tendancies; are they already spending a lot on advertising--then they can purchse more advanced services. If not--they might want to respond to Yuri's suggestions above and do it themselves or with readily made templates.

I'd also think about their sales and mark up on items. I was looking out my business window at the neighborhood. There is a funky coffeehouse there; can't spend a lot and their reach is very neighborhoodish--not a good candidate for extensive SEO. An optician comes to view--very high mark ups on their costs but there are opticians everywhere. Maybe its a local chain--ah that is a likelier candidate.

If they are coming to you rather than you targeting I'd ask questions about their financial capability to qualify them as a candidate for your services.

Years ago and for several years I submitted to hundreds, probably thousands of directories. It did work. I would add varied anchor text for long tail but relevant anchor text that was also relatively or absolutely non-competitive.

Invariably the site(s) in question would see serps improve for the anchor text in question in google. It did work. It was every tom, dick and harry directory under the sun. There was no effort at checking directory structure and value.

Then it stopped working in Google. It was around the time that commentary on the web suggested that directories were devalued. I don't recall the precise dates or around which google update.

Subsequent to that I heard from webmasters that directory submission of that ilk still had a positive effect in msn or yahoo. I don't know and didn't bother checking. The terms were long tail and not very active...and when you factored in the lower percentages of traffic those two engines generated it didn't seem worth the effort.

Rand, did you check each directory in the list in the same manner as you described subsequently vis a vis aviva?

BTW, from a different perspective, not to long ago I did some advanced link searching and uncovered a directory with higher relevance to my main business and site due to relevance, location, etc. (a regional directory).

I submitted and lo and behold it is a steady but small regular contributor to traffic. In fact more regular than the aggregate value of many of the hundreds or thousands that I submitted to....including some at the top of your list like DMZ.

Regardless of link juice or not...I'll always take the traffic from sources with relevance.

This comment is extraordinarily late....and I don't know if anyone is going to read this.....but......I found this topic and the results fascinating. Its several months later, and I spoke with Daniel today as a follow up.

The business site still has first page google rankings for its money terms. Prior to the super digg it didn't rank for anything. From the conversation it appeared that the significant and dramatic step that drove this site into relevant serps rankings was simply the super effect of the digg. From our conversation it didn't appear to me that other bl efforts were signficant enough to cause the kind of jump the site had. Daniel referenced that the business/site owner let the url registration lapse....so that had a somewhat neg impact on serps....but they are still first page.

Now several months later the business site gets (per Daniel) about 100 or more money term serps hits which has gotta be great for a used car dealer. Couple of sales at x thousands of dollars per car...goes a long way to making that SEO effort very worthwhile.

that was a large task....and kudo's to all who participated and made it happen.

While I only scanned the report and data to date.....at least its nice to know that the majority of technologies reported very similar data. If the information was widely skewed and dramatically different per methodology it would have been reason to worry.

Unique visitors is a terrible metric, created by the analysis industry early on but with little/no/or misleading value.

When selling things, such as premium memberships or reports they invariably involve multiple visits. The more expensive the items sold the more time spent in evaluating the expenditure and probably more visits.

Heheh.......change the price of premium memberships for a year to $1 and unique visits may have some meaning.

I went back and looked at last years stats and you have that return visitor information. Over most of the last 1/2 of the year seomoz hit about 60-70,000 return visitors--- and that was a big jump from the beginning of the years; all of which indicates that there is a lot stickiness. And if those numbers are growing.....that is a real strong indication of reader satisfaction.

If they are flat--then I'd be working to improve those totals. Personnally, I'd do all cartoons all the time. They are a riot!!!!!

The first thing I noticed was exactly the same thing as Chuck; that return visitor stats were flat. Could that be a reporting anomaly. If you looked at return visits over longer time frames (checking return visits from a starting baseline time frame I'd expect you would see significant growth.) If not, then the site has no "stickiness" and I don't believe that is the case at all.

A second thing was that the referring domains stats don't seem to jive with the reports that show almost 200,000 visits from search engines. (I'm assuming that the entire number of additional SE engine visits not shown don't total up to something like 50,000 additional search generated visits).

Third, as with many sites the long tail volume of searches has to be rediculously long....based on the aggregate percentage total shown above.

Lastly, I recently converted, Rand. You have been a long time quality provider to the industry--keep it up. Thanks

Dave

PS and off topic--installing Yahoo search for SEOMOZ is a huge improvement. It works very well. Kudo's.

Richard Zwicky's post on market share is fascinating. It is so dramatically different than what other companies that report market share post.

I tend to agree with it.

Further there is an interesting anomaly reported that doesn't reflect the power and importance of google maps/local. While the totals reflect very low numbers consistent with several years of reporting in fact the importance of g maps/local is extraordinary following google's insertion of gmaps onebox and gmaps serps at the top of g serps.

This is most evident in the complaints found at Google groups for Maps users. The most extraordinary case was when the webmasters for two different hospitals reported widespread problems with phone calls to wrong numbers. It turns out that the information in G maps/local can be very different than what is in the web site. (It might be pulled from old or extraneous data).

When you extrapolate back to Zwicky's research on actual G market share (extracted from his data) as being possibly 50% greater than what is reported by sources like Comscore, Hitwise, Nielson, and Compete....and then you get a feel for the importance of G maps/local for all those long tail local/regional searches one gets a sense for how important and critical G maps/local has become.....even if users aren't turning to this advanced search option initially.

This is a very late comment. I was looking at something at Digital Point. 1/3 of the total volume of threads and posts are all in the business section and virtually all of these are about buying, selling, and trading services/sites/links etc. It is a huge active sprawling market place.

Subtract that volume of traffic....and it is still a very large very noisy forum.......just not as large. But cripes....watch the traffic and volume of activity in their market place. It is active!!!!!!!

One of the extremely powrful and important reasons to set one's business site up with linkbait qualities is that for a small business like a caterer and/or a printer referenced above, or any other similar type of business is because logical links are extremely difficult to get.

I know I've been working on getting logical links for my business for several years from certain logical sources. Other small business operators have websites handled by a third party, its not a priority for them, they forget about it, and it just doesn't get done. This is not necessarily different from asking for links from webmasters...but its probably more frustrating; at least webmasters are in the business of treating their web sites as a priority.

so you might as well place your site in a position to garner links...especially because your competition in the small business world is going to have the same difficulties as you are in garnering links.....and you might as well take advantage of your link bait knowledge to soar beyond them.

An absolutely fascinating article and a great many thoughtful responses.

I've both worked with many caterers, know caterers, and been witness to all their operations in a variety of business functions, including having worked with the principals of a major caterer on big business decisions that demand a lot of time. In fact I'll post twice after looking at some catering sites. (so I like great food....so shoot me!)

Also I have a business, somewhat like catering, in the sense that it doesn't grab the attention of the linkerati. I have enough of an appreciation for how well the web works for my site and aspects of it that grab the attention of the customer....that I truly value the ideas. In fact I have a hard copy of this article to pore over.

From a first glance, though, the full scope of this project "appears" to be a lot for the small and even the medium sized business owner. It is a lot to grasp for the non-web oriented business owner. That same principal, at any active business of this type is consumed with a ton of items to deal with on a daily basis...and at whichever part of the business they emphasize its consuming.

What would be very helpful, Rand, is to price out this idea. Price it in a range if necessary.

If my business is a start-up....I may not be able to afford it unless there is a lot of money behind my business.

If I'm an established business I've got to look into this expense vis a vis established expenses for advertising/marketing. What is this going to cost me versus the "typical 5 page" catering website.

Will it actually bring in business.....that I have to compete for...or will it bring me lots more links....higher rankings...and some extra business. Give us some figures to work with.

EGOL's comments are supurb....but still is the scope of this project beyond my capabilities and bank account. That is something I have to know. How does the scope of this project compare to the "five page web site" I might do that will compete in the market. And if I have the passion to be great...does that passion stretch to every other aspect of the business...including advertising and the web.

In a sense you are proposing the Exquisite best....amongst the world of the mediocre....and I have to know what its going to cost me...not only in terms of dollars but time investment.

Sometimes, there is a more mundane way to get to the same bottom line--lots more customers for--for a relatively simple site. In fact I've seen this work for sites in the catering "food chain".

Make your site THE resource for every complementary service around. If your a caterer....make your site a resource for hotels and venues where catering might take place, all the wedding planner, party givers, graduating celebrations, birthdays, and holiday celebrations within the area. Be a resource for every limo service, floral provider, etc etc etc. you can think of.

Many of the visitors searching for any of these services are going to need your services also. If they don't need them this time...they go back to you the next time. You are the resource with the most information for catering...and every associated service around.

Not as sexy or provocative...but this also works.

Now I'll pour over the ideas again...and visit some catering websites and report back.

I started learning seo around the same time you did, Rand, at at least some of the forums you also visited.

Man....you've come a long way, baby.

I agree. I think the noise element on a lot of forums is louder and the substance is down. Blogs may well be better.....and this one is great. Open source --learning together is a great method....and having succcess stories....such as high rankings w/in competitive fields is an absolute way to learn....how to do things.

It is critical in most areas to learn by meeting people. I think I'll be at ses ny this month....my first conference.

Nice post Rebecca. I too have never read Kathy's pieces. I only today found out about this.

It's a wierd and crappy world when some anonymous #%^$ can make an anonymous death threat. If it's sexist oriented that makes it worse.

I'm astonished at the confrontational language on the web in various formats. If this stuff was said face to face it would often end up in fights. It is literally changing one aspect of the essence of interaction.

I simply hope she sails through this in a healthy way and they somehow capture the sick b*stard!

I'm also a huge believer in keyword research. My little business is local and fortunately ranks high for the primary industry keywords. While we rank high in all 3 SE's for the primary keyword phrase we similary rank reasonably high in many variations on that phrase. In fact we find close to 20 good secondary phrases on which people search...and we rank high for them. Traffic for those 2ndary phrases in aggregate, is greater than for the number 1 term; far greater.

While the suggestion above was one good description on how to find local calling regions--it is not necessarily how visitors will navigate and/or find things on the site.

In fact this thread is about 2 things; navigation within a site and keyword research.